What are our universities for? Taxpayers have a right to know | Simon Jenkins

The Augar review has looked into funding. But we need a bigger vision to solve the legacy of failed marketisation

Eat your heart out, Henry VIII. Britain’s universities have pulled off the greatest institutional coup of our age. They have reversed the dissolution of these contemporary monasteries.

The rescue job on student loans performed by Philip Augar this week is expected to channel another £6bn a year of state funds into universities and colleges. Almost half the nation’s post-18 cohort –...